Many believe young people are the hope for our future, and that they’ll make a difference once they grow up. But very few actually go to teenagers and ask them to solve community challenges right now. That’s what Global Minimum does.

The Lemelson Foundation partners with Villgro to incubate innovations that improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in rural India, and support the social entrepreneurs behind these innovations. Abhishek Sen is one of the co-founders of the medical engineering and design firm Biosense Technologies, a company incubated by Villgro.
Sen is known for his pioneering work in point-of-care diagnostics, which are simple tests that can be administered at someone’s bedside. After noticing that most medical innovations catered to a western context, Sen and his partners founded Biosense to develop revolutionary diagnostics that are applicable in the uniquely complex environment of India.

No one wants to be fumbling for the instruction book when you need a shot of life-saving medicine. That is exactly why a new auto-injector technology talks users through how to administer emergency doses of drugs—minimizing the potential for errors in situations where even a brief delay could prove fatal.
The talking injector was the brainchild of two college students who turned their own personal challenges into a major medical products corporation, with the springboards of the right college class and a modest investment from people who understand invention and entrepreneurs.

In 2013, the Lemelson-MIT InvenTeam at Natick High School near Boston invented a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) capable of conducting search-and-rescue operations in iced-over waters. The vehicle can traverse the surface of the ice in just a few minutes, then lower a submersible into a hole in the ice with a boom and pulley system. The first-of-its-kind submersible takes the place of a human diver, searching for objects or bodies in dangerous waters up to 40-feet deep with temperatures of 33–45°F.
Natick’s InvenTeam has received significant attention for the breakthrough, including an invitation to participate in the 2014 White House Science Fair. The Lemelson Foundation recently caught up with Doug Scott, Natick’s InvenTeam mentor, and Katelyn Sweeney, a former InvenTeam team member who is currently a sophomore at MIT.

Dr. Angela Belcher is an invention force to be reckoned with. The MIT professor of materials science and biological engineering is a leader in the field of nanotechnology, and has leveraged her extensive work on self-assembled materials to start two companies. Yet what excites Dr. Belcher the most isn’t lab work or business plans, but teaching. “If I didn’t have such passionate and brilliant students, I wouldn’t be able to do anything that I do. Students think anything is possible,” says Belcher.

The Lemelson-MIT Program celebrates outstanding inventors and inspires young people to pursue inventive careers. David Sengeh, a Ph.D. candidate at the MIT Media Lab, is an embodiment of that mission.
Sengeh was one of the winners of the 2014 Lemelson-MIT National Collegiate Student Prize Competition for his groundbreaking work on improved sockets for prosthetic legs. Sengeh witnessed the need for his invention first-hand by talking to amputees in his home country Sierra Leone and those in the United States. He noticed that many seldom used their legs and if they did, they were uncomfortable. The reason was simple: The prosthetics hurt.

Most of us take our indoor plumbing for granted, but about 40 percent of people in the world do not have access to adequate sanitation. Many of those people live in cramped slums, where human waste ends up in rivers or the street, where it can contaminate drinking water and the food supply and cause disease.
A company called Sanergy is helping to solve that problem in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya with a cost-effective solution that is not just providing hygienic sanitation, but also creating badly needed jobs and taking the waste out of the community.

Mushrooms that take the place of plastics. A ventilator that saves infants in Malawi and costs less than $200. A replacement for rebar that makes buildings safer during earthquakes. These are just a few of the hundreds of ideas and companies that have been nurtured by VentureWell, a long-time grantee, partner, and collaborator of The Lemelson Foundation.

Access to sustainable energy has been shown to improve the quality of life for both rural and urban populations by allowing them to enhance their livelihoods, and also address basic human needs, such improving health outcomes and educational success. Achieving this impact requires more than great energy technology delivered in a uniform way to all clients, it requires that the technology that is delivered ties to the livelihoods and needs of those communities with appropriate means of financing.

Play and its connection to the innovative mind was explored in "Invention at Play," an interactive exhibition by the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.

High School inventors from Lemelson-MIT InvenTeams share their technologies, get opportunity to meet the President at the third White House Science Fair celebrating the student winners of a broad range of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) competitions from across the country.

Promethean’s invention, a Rapid Milk Chiller, provides milk refrigeration at the point of extraction, using an innovative thermal battery which takes advantage of any available grid power to re-charge itself.

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Impact Spotlight

In June 2016, hundreds of students and teachers from all across the United States converged on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) campus in Cambridge to celebrate the power of invention.
They came to Cambridge for EurekaFest, a multi-day, student-centered showcase designed to empower the next generation of inventors through activities that inspire youth, honor role models, and encourage creativity and problem solving. The annual event marks the culmination of a year’s work by the dedicated staff at the Lemelson-MIT program, and it is unlike any other confab in the world of invention education. Each year EurekaFest brings together a community of up-and-coming student inventors, aged 14 to 24, and the educators who are encourage and support these young visionaries and problem solvers.